


Together, then

by Slant



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Everybody Dies, Hope, Hope?, Last humans?, Survivors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-09 11:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12275493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: An AU where Black Lady won and the Outer Sailors lost.Of course it takes more than that to separate Hotaru and Chibi Usa,





	1. +++POINT DEFENSE ACTIVE+++

The world was lost to the invaders from the skies or from the future; their saucer had landed in Tokyo one evening, the Sailor Scouts had fought them, they all vanished and the next day only the ship had returned. Under their harsh rule the people of Earth groaned in torment. 

Michiru and Haruka ran desperate and gasping through the ruins of Tokyo. The flying saucer men were bad, everyone knew that. What others did not know was that they were a distraction from the real horror; Michiru had seen it in her dreams. Somewhere there was a little girl, and she would destroy the Earth. No one could be allowed to stop them, and no distraction could be allowed from their important mission. Only they were willing to make the tough choices.

They cornered the little girl in a ruined plantarium, and spouted their justifications to her.  
"Please," she said, "Wait while I heal this puppy."  
The dog - mangy and half-starved from living rough in the broken place that was once Tokyo whined, licked her hands and trotted off. They struck and the glowing energy of their attacks met the ruinous light on her brow with all the effect of a pebble on a blast door.  
The backlash killed them and the dog and reduced four city block's worth of abandoned buildings to rubble.

The woman who stood up in the new crater was not someone who would care for injured animals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might think that Haruka and Michiru's universal plan of "kill Sailor Saturn" would be something that they can theoretically achieve, and that is a completely legitimate reading of the text. My reading of the contemptuous sneer on Hotaru's face (probably not Hotaru doing the sneering, but whoever it was was using her face) when they attack her in ep 119 is that they were hilariously outclassed.


	2. +++AUTHORIZATION REQUEST+++

The world was lost twice over. To the invaders from the future or from the skies, who had broken the Moon Kingdom government-in-exile, and then to the invaders from Tau, who had subverted Nemesis and the infinite power of their dark crystal. Beneath their rule the Earth writhed in torment. 

The room was tall, elegant and warped beyond human comprehension. Artistry and alien geometry alike were disregarded by the two woman who sat at a spindly table, playing chess. 

They could play with live pieces, with once-human slaves, with fabulous sets crafted from diamonds and human bone. At Black Lady's instance, they play with an unassuming wooden Staunton set. She does not remember learning to play; she has no memory of Ami at all, but with the rules and the gambits and the pins and forks and discovered attacks and skewers is the knowledge that the strategic position is what matters, that the physical pieces are an irrelevant distraction. 

"Mate." said Black Lady.  
Mistress 9 sighed, and made the same move in response that she had the last three times. They put their pieces through the same futile dance as before.  
"This bores me," said the tall dark queen, and if it was Saturn or Mistress 9, and if they were talking about the game or the long empty hours of dominion, neither of them knew, "Turn the board over and start again?"  
"Yes." said Black Lady, and if she was talking about the game, or feeling out Mistress 9 for rebellion against Pharaoh 90, she refused know. Some thoughts were too dangerous to have, but too important not to have.

Deep inside Mistress 9's psyche, Saturn felt the cold satisfaction of her Function. After all these years of possession, imprisonment and uselessness, the Hair to the Moon had had granted her authorization for Use. She looked up from the board, gazed deep into Wicked Lady's eyes. Was there a flicker in there? Did the princess watch through those crimson eyes? Rail against what her body did? Nudge her possessor toward this moment?

The elegant pink haired queen made a microscopic, completely deniable expression, stood, and apparently by accident, stepped between Saturn and the nexus of Pharaoh 90's power.

Together, then.  
It would make no difference, but at the same time, it meant everything.


	3. Aftermath

Chibiusa woke to the sound of a baby crying. The wails echoed from the hard stone walls of the empty, vaulted, but completely earthly room.  
"Saturn? I... we... I didn't expect to survive that."  
She looked down at the purple-eyed baby, knelt and picked her up, holding the small warm bundle against her shoulder, bouncing her until she stopped crying.

"Mama..." She trailed off, "she told me stories about how Sailor Moon could remake the world with the power of the Silver Crystal, but I'm just me, and it doesn't like me much. We're going to have to do this the hard way."

She squared her shoulders and walked out of the palace to see what was left of the world.


	4. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary "I've been eight for nearly a thousand years, and I like gardening," she told Pluto. "Might that help?"

There was nothing left. Pharaoh 90 had been very thorough in infesting all life with the essence of the Tau system and Saturn had been exacting in destroying everything corrupted by him. There were buildings, and roads, stones, and wind and dust. Clean skeletons sat in wreaked cars or cowered in basements, their clothes untouched by rot. The bark-stripped corpses of trees stood over barren parks. Chibiusa would have panicked but the little girl who had been Saturn needed her, so she just wept and searched, exploring the abandoned buildings of Tokyo. She did not approach Azabu-jūban, in the certain knowledge that it would break her to see what she had done to her home. 

...

Hotaru cried, but as a baby it could not be for the wreckage of lives, and she seemed reasonably clean, so Chibiusa looked for formula milk, and found a well stocked shelf of packets of white powder in an eerily silent supermarket; but from the state of the rest of the food, transmuted into scentless mush, she did not really trust it. Chibiusa made up a bottle and drank it herself, trying not to think if Saturn would actually be better off for not consuming poison.

She searched more and wept and slept and awoke ravenous but determined. There was someone who had always been there for her, and even if she had died—even if Wicked Lady had killed her—there was somewhen where she always had been. 

"Come on Saturn, let's go see Puu," she said, and immediately regretted speaking; her voice fell into the silence of the empty city, making it more eerie for the temporary break. It would be a lie to say that she was confident. The Key of Time had worked for her before but not always. She'd escaped the Dark Moon clan and fled to the past, and she'd taken the inner Senshi into the future, but between those travels the key had ignored her or dropped her on the hard ground. She thought she should be able to take Saturn into the time mists, and didn't expect anything worse than a few bruises if it failed. 

...

The Pluto who was guarding the time door was alarmingly young, with the Garnet rod still taller than herself. She issued a hesitant warning as Chibiusa peered nervously into the corridor.  
"Puu! Please help me."  
Chibiusa had not known how much she wanted to see the friend who was practically her second mother before she saw the tiny stranger looking back at her with no recognition in her eyes at all. There were introductions and awkward explanations ("I need to time travel because I was Evil" is always a hard sell to the Guardian of Time) and promises not to try to hijack the Time Corridor, and eventually Pluto agreed to at least survey the damage. 

The worst part about it was names. Pluto had apparently been very conscious of her dignity as Senshi when she was young, and also was conscious of Chibiusa's dignity as Moon Princess. It took a lot of arguing for her to address Chibiusa as anything other than "Princess Serenity-sama"*

...

They teleported to the ruins of the Lunar Palace. The Silver Millennium computer still ran—more-or-less—still contained the wisdom of the long dead Kingdom. It recognised Chibiusa's access rights and managed to reconstitute them some food. It also offered a vantage point. The Earth was still blue ocean swirled with clouds, but the land that should have been green or brown was a uniform yellow that neither Pluto nor Chibiusa liked the look of. 

They were stood looking up at the injured Earth when Hotaru gave a cry as the sigil on her brow blazed and Chibiusa staggered.  
"Orf! did you just get heavier?"  
"It might be her power protecting her by letting her grow up faster."  
"Oh good, I think she's wonderful but I'm too young to raise a daughter."

The old Sailor Moon - the one her parents had told her about—the dead one (and her mind veered away from that thought) would have healed the world through miracle, with the power of her heart and the Empyrean Silver Crystal. That the world stood would have been a testament to her faith. Chibiusa was not her, but maybe ... maybe that wasn't important. Maybe what mattered about being Sailor Moon was determination hope, not miracles. Maybe there was more than one right way to be Sailor Moon? 

"Sailor Pluto, I need to rebuild the world." She said it quite simply, like she might once have said "Puu, can we go for ice cream?"  
"And how do you mean to do that, Usagi Small Lady Serenity?" Pluto looked nervous. The princess—Serenity— was known for her open heart and complete lack of practicality.  
"The Time Door. I need it." Chibiusa hadn't realised that she had an answer until she was talking. "When I first went to the past I went on a beach holiday with the other Sailors, and I met a plesiosaur. It was a message, from me or you to me now. Life that exists only in the past can be life that lives now, we just have to give it a passage."  
"I'm going to rebuild the world, and the only place I can get living creatures from is the past."  
"You can't do that. Reseeding the world would take an unimaginable amount of work. Outside the time corridor, we'll grow old and die before we're done."

Chubiusa's eyes widened at a sudden memory of her father saying "My daughter has no power." He hadn't meant her the hear but she had and the hurt of it had driven her running to the promises and lies of Wiseman. He'd meant she lacked the strength to grow, but what Pluto was saying changed everything; recontexulised and remade the hateful words as a cause for hope.  
"I've been eight for nearly a thousand years, and I like gardening," she told Pluto. "Might that help?"


	5. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; a space-filling curve to cover all land begins with a single thousend-mile journey.

And so it went. Chibimoon and Pluto and Saturn, her name forgotten with her rebirth, put in what is widely regarded as the most preposterous all-nighter in the totality of the observable universe, Pluto opening the time door into late modernity, Chibimoon taking, cumulatively, billions of tonnes of seeds, saplings, and soil, carrying them through the time corridor to the day after Saturn cleansed the world and then planting them. She slept when she was exhausted and then Pluto would shift time so she could do it again.  
Millions of Chibimoons coexisted, in a series of carefully non-interfering time loops. Pluto winced constantly at the violation of Taboo, but bowed to necessity in the face of allowing omnicide to stand.  
Saturn, ageing erratically at Chibimoon's side grew up in a strange mixture of imported plants surrounded by dead ground and dozens of identical pink-haired caretakers, all of whom were called Chibiusa.

Chibiusa cheated when she could. The resources of two world-spanning civilizations were hers by right of inheritance, and she spent them without consideration for tomorrow, splicing Moon-kingdom crystal brains and power sources into Earth tractors and ploughshares.

Sealife was actually easier. Pluto opened the Doors of Time underwater in the past and another at the other end of the corridor in the future and let pressure take its course. The misty dimention outside of time stank afterwards, but it was nothing that opening the Door to deep space did not solve.

And when the sun rose on the second day after Pharaoh 90's fall, there was just the one of her and Saturn, both fully grown, confident, and unbelievably good at plant identification. 

...

And that was, more-or-less, the story they told anyway. The truth was messier.  
It was not planting season everywhere at once, so it really took them a year in linear time. Chibimoon did not work constantly, but took breaks; she was not Pluto and the Garnet Rod did not support her psyche against crushing tedium and loneliness. The only company was in the past, with people that Wicked Lady was going to kill, and she was not Saturn, and every aspect of her power was not engineered towards coping with surviver's guilt. She volunteered at retirement homes and in hospitals, where she could hope to socilaise with people who would die before she tried to kill them. She took Saturn with her, to meet real humans and so she needed a name.  
"My baby sister Momo," or as she grew, "my little sister Ikuko". It was the only memorial she could offer. 

Despite the breaks and her initial confidence, the challenge was near-endless, daunting and setbacks were numerous. Chibiusa had bad days and worse nights. Some associations never left her and she could never plant bulbs without thinking of Momoko scolding Lilica for eating flowers, and thinking of Momo would leave her inconsolable for days. Somewhere around Mid Asia (The rolling Steppe was a boring but easy ecosystem to transplant, once you got the seed mix right), Pluto asked her if she'd been growing, and measured her, making a mark on the Gate. 

...

For Saturn it was the gentlest of awakenings. Not spasming into conciousness of her power amid desperation and surrounded by enemies and terrified allies making awful decisions, but a long slow awakening like a lazy morning surrounded by the things you love the most. Maybe only Saturn could love the ruined earth and the backbreaking labour of Rebirth done by hand, but love it she did. Her delight and laughter did much to ease Chibiusa's heart. 

...

When the planting was over, Chibiusa had a lot of bugs already, brought forward with the dirt and as eggs clinging to plants. When she got sick it was obvious that humanity's old companion, influenza, had made it too.

She took a few cubic kilometers of dirt too, in case there were any important bacteria.

...

It did not all go well- the dead wood of the rain forests exploded with rot once she brought fungal spores through, and without established root systems soil erosion became ruinous. A few mice and rats came in with seed shipments, and their populations grew without limit until she reformed Luna-P for rodent hunting. 

...

After that first pulse of power on the Moon, Saturn's power lapsed into quiescence for a long time, so it was not until Chibiusa was attempting to transplant reef species around Oceania that she said, "I think my name was Hotaru. Did... were you someone before?"  
"Usagi." Then Usagi's rusted social skills cut in. "Usagi Small Lady Serenity." She resisted the urge to curtsy: they were after all, in a small boat.  
"They called me Chibiusa because I lived with another Usagi," says Chibiusa. She hesitates, but pushes ahead "I always thought of her as That Other Stupid Usagi, and now I miss her so much. I"  
She stares out over the ocean.  
"I miss her."  
"I can't stop thinking of her that way though. That's who she was to me, and I won't let go of that."  
"So I guess... call me Chibiusa, even if it doesn't make sense. For her."

...

Chbiusa and Hotaru share who they had been (or who they remembered being) and who they hoped to be, and perhaps for the first time, Chibimoon dared to hope that there would be a place for her in the world she was building.

They admitted to each other, as Chibiusa never had to Pluto, what the cracks in their hearts were where the monsters had crawled in. Chibiusa had never forgiven herself but found it easy to understand and excuse how Hotaru had been controlled and praised Saturn for her rebellion and defiance. It was the first time that any Moon Princess had encouraged independence in the Senchi of Silence.

"I think she despised you, you know," said Hotaru one day, "She hated me; my defiance had cost her dearly, but Wicked Lady she only saw as deluded and misled, so she always thought that you were begging to be fooled."  
"She had uh.... powerful feelings about that." Hotaru blushed right down to her neck.  
Their memories of their older evil alter egos were distant enough not to be traumatic, but they were still uncomfortable to review. Not just the awful things they had done to other people but the ... extreme physicality of their other—than—chaste feelings for each other.  
"I think Wicked Lady played to that."  
"Ugh, they were both awful. Lets promise each other never to make terrible life decisions." Hotaru held out her little finger. Chibiusa took it. 

...

Saturn remembered her other lives too, but they were weak pallid things, all empty luxury and endless sleep. Horaru had known conflict and pain and loss and the sort of hurt you held to your heart and never let out. Pluto would not let them cross her timeline, but they visited her Mother's grave and found photos of Tomoe Sochei from before.

...

Eventually they went back to Tokyo and tended the parks they had known. Pluto insisted that they import roses, and not cross their own timelines by taking them from Yoshiki-san's greenhouses. The intervening centuries of labour had dulled memory but not taken away the sting of the dead city.

...

Hotaru had nightmares, and woke sobbing about being pushed back into the dark. Maybe it was something that Mistress Nine did to her, but once, Usagi heard her crying to Serenity. 

They went out for parfaits in the past every week. It's an affectation, a performance of being ordinary girls, partly in the hope that one day they can do this for real, but mostly just because Chibiusa clung to the routine long past the point where it lost any meaning. They wore the uniform of a nearby school, far enough away that there won't be many supposed classmates to not recognise them, close enough that they are unremarkable.

"So," said Chibiusa with the air of one who has given the matter long consideration, "Crystal Tokyo was sick."  
She pushed back her sundae. It's a lead-in, and it establishes a space where it's okay to judge what they became. To step outside power and being a Sailor or a Princess and the fealty owed from a past life and think if the system can change or if it needs to die.  
"Mama is going to keep Puu locked away beyond the Time Door," said Chibiusa, "I don't think that that is a thing Mama does out of jealousy because Puu had feelings for Endy-papa, I think it's their `normal'."  
"I do have to be a secret," said Pluto, "There's a lot of ways to abuse time travel."  
"There's `secret' and `not allowed in the time-stream or to have visitors', and I'm sure that they aren't the same thing."  
"I... ummm." Hotaru fiddled with her saucer nervously.  
"What is it Hotaru? Take your time," said Chibiusa encouragingly.  
"I think they made me sleep. Before I mean. The old Queen Serenity. They found out what I was and just. Everyone was very gentle and kind but I think I slept for years and years and woke up when it was over and I didn't even recognise my reflection. You were there, Pluto."  
"That hasn't happened to me yet. And I'll be out on the edge of space, guarding the deep black."  
"What about the rest of them?" asked Usagi, "In the future, Neptune and Uranus live on the edge of the solar system."  
"I don't know about them."  
"Ugh, all the Moon Kingdoms are awful." said Chibiusa. Pluto looked shocked. Hotaru's eyes widened.  
"This is gross too, of course. What sort of world needs an eight-year-old to give Gaia artificial respiration? I should be crushing a dweeb in class elections, not reforesting Brazil."  
"I remember being afraid of my class president. I mean I was afraid of everyone. They all seemed to hate me so suddenly and for no reason, but she seemed.... vicious." Hotaru's memories of civilian life were all pretty bad.  
"I wouldn't be like that. I'd help everyone and if someone started acting possessed by an ancient evil or having lost time, I'd get them help or an exorcism or whatever. Or if they needed special considerations like medication or extra study or something." Usagi gestured dismissively with a long spoon.  
"How hard can being decent to kids be?"  
"I think we just found the motto of the Third Moon Kingdom," giggled Pluto. 

...

The world- and Chibiusa was starting to think of it as her dumb big sister- needed birds for pollination, and herbivores for the grasses and she needed it ready to support people before the built infrastructure rotted, because she was going to steal people from the past too. She was going to steal all of them, or at least, all of the ones that didn't lead to now. 

...

Chibiusa worried that she had missed something. Someone's favourite flower, the moss that fills the cracks in the sidewalk. Sprouts. She knew she'd miss Mamaru's Rosa Gladiata, but that cultivar exists almost entirely within her world-line and Pluto forbids her to retrieve them. She knew who she's going to continue to miss: Serenity-Mama, Ikuko-Mama, Kenji-Papa, Endy-Papa, Shingo-kun and That Other Stupid Usagi, her Sailors; her friends, Tokyo, Crystal Tokyo, and everyone in them. Pluto begged her to accept the city as inaccessible; the timeline can't be altered without endangering the rest of the world, and her future is possibly broken.

...

Diana turned up in the time corridor; she slinked out of the mists and dozed in Pluto's accustomed spot. She can't exist; the crystal city she was to be born in will never have been.  
"In my time she snuck through the gates to visit Puu with me," said Chibiusa, "might that be what lets her ...?"  
"The Gates exist outside of time and beyond the reach of causality," said Pluto. "If she's been here before that could be enough to survive as a neverborn."  
Diana opened one eye, yawned enormously at their speculation, and said "I'm a cat," with exaggerated nonchalance. She licked one paw and curled up the other way, and that is all the explanation they ever get. 

...

Getting billions of people to walk into a mysterious corridor on your say-so is difficult. Getting them to do it as the sky turns black and the ground turns to horror is a different problem, but at least they are motivated. Hotaru cheated. Maybe only sensitives like Mars and Neptune saw Saturn coming when she was a little girl raised in ignorance, but the woman she is now has lived a thousand subjective years in Ruin and performed the grinding labour of Rebirth with her own hands and knows them both intimately. The day before Pharaoh 90 claims the world, everyone has prophetic dreams of the Senshi of Silence standing amid the burning ruins of the world, and in the corner of the vision, clearly labelled as "Emergency Exit", the Door of Time.

...

They came pouring through, panicked refugees from the past running into cities near-identical to the ones they left behind. The air was cleaner, and the astronomers and any still-functional clocks agreed: ten years had passed. Surveillance data from satellites and the other surviving automated systems was extremely strange but seems to agree with a basic timeline: Tokyo went quiet, then all humans were snatched out of time to now, then something very ugly happened to everything left behind, and several years after that everything died, then the world was replanted in a season, and after five years of regrowth, the human population arrived.


	6. Good ending

"Droids, Princess!" said Pluto.  
"Youma, Sailor Pluto!" said Hotaru.  
"Cardians, Sailor Saturn!" said Chibiusa, getting into the spirit of the thing.  
"No, Droids," said Pluto, "they are how we save Tokyo. What were you two on about?"  
"I thought we were doing a bit," giggled Hotaru.  
"We aren't?" said Chibiusa.  
"We take everyone, and if we leave Droid replacements, the timeline stands."  
Chibiusa was stunned. She had to remake the world, for Sailor Moon's sake, and maybe with Hotaru life on the other side could be bearable, but she'd never dared look at the hole in her soul where the people she'd loved should be.  
"Can we do that?" she asked, trying not to hope.  
"It'll fool anything from the Tau. They didn't see the difference between possessing a human and a novelty vacuum cleaner."

...

Chapter 1 Redux

Michiru and Haruka ran desperate and gasping through the ruins of Tokyo; somewhere there was a little girl, and she would destroy the Earth. No one could be allowed to stop them, and no distraction could be allowed from their important mission. Only they were willing to make the tough choices.

"Those jerks!" exclaimed Hotaru, pointing at the pair from the top of a tower block "I recognise them! they're off to try and kill me."  
"I think they're Sailors, so I don't think a couple of Droids will be able to stop them," said Chibiusa, thoughtfully.  
"Oh no, I have to beat my attempted murderers unconscious," said Sailor Saturn, flatly. "Saturn! Elbow! Droooooooooop!"  
"Oh dear," said Chibiusa as her friend Dopplared towards Uranus and Neptune. "I never should have introduced her to WWE."  
...  
"The downside is that now I have to send a pair of droids who look just like them to try and kill me. Ugh, I'm such a jerk."  
...  
"In about six seconds a puppy comes out of the planetarium. Grab it and run and don't stop."  
...  
A blast of energy lashed out of the planetarium, toppling buildings and sending rubble and dust flying. Chibimoon, dog held tightly to her chest ran frantically to keep ahead of the worst of it. Behind her, she could hear Saturn whooping with laughter.  
"Go little me! kick their arses!"

...

Some reunions were much more welcome.  
"Oh it's wonderful to have you back," said Ikuko. "Can I get you some tea?" Tears streamed down her face. Chibiusa lurched forward and hugged her, sobbing. Hotaru stood awkwardly; she felt she was intruding on something very personal.  
"Have you grown?" asked Ikuko. Then, suspiciously: "How long has it been for you?"  
"Too long."  
Ikuko hugged her tighter.

"It's very nice to meet you Tsukino-san but we did actually have something to ask of you."  
"Of course you have my blessing dear."  
Hotaru blushed and hesitated.  
"Well that too, but also, can we drain your life-energy to run this evil robot double of you, and also shove your unconscious body through a time-portal to about 10 years in the future?"  
"Sure. Do you need me to manage Kenji?"  
"I... I was expecting that to be a much harder sell."  
"I trust my daughters dear," said Ikuko, with perfect motherly guilt-tripping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omake:  
> This bit was cut because it doesn't match my time line :(
> 
> "And you must be Hotaru. Come in! Chibiusa has told me so little about you. `Beautiful and Mysterous' was about it."  
> Chibiusa blushed. Apparently this was her punishment for hypnotising her parent, uncle and grandparents.


	7. Epilogue: Chapter 2 Redux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a time travel story. Of course the epilogue comes in the middle (and gets published after the end)

The sun shone brightly on two girls sitting in a park playing chess. Around them children yelled and laughed, bees visited flowers and people in general got on with enjoying beautiful, sunny, post-post-apocalyptic day. They play with an unassuming wooden Staunton set; Chibiusa remembers Ami teaching her the moves and some of the basics of tactics "don't be distracted by what they look like; the beauty of the game is the way the pieces move around each other. " 

"Checkmate," said Hotaru.  
"Yes," said Chibiusa, "Dumplings?"  
"Loser buys," said Hotaru.  
And they walked off hand-in-hand, to meet the future. 

...

 

"So what?" said Chibiusa, "Are we just going to pretend that the last million subjective years never happened and we're the same people we were? Just go back to grade school ?"  
"No," said Hotaru, "We chose our lives. No one gets to say how millennia-old young ladies live but us. Although if it doesn't involve holding hands and long walks with my new dog I'm going to be annoyed."


	8. Identity

"Okay Puu, is there anything we can do about the Black Moon? It's not like we can play that like it's the Truman Show. Death Phantom knew humans well enough to see the difference between a droid Sailor and the real thing."  
"I have been thinking of this. I believe it is best that we found the Silver Millennium now, while the people of Earth have reason to believe in Princess Serenity."  
"But I'm not Serenity-mama!"  
Pluto looked at her. "Those are certainly words that you have just said, Princess Serenity-sama, but it would be difficult to agree. Surely your mother named you after herself, twice, for reasons more compelling than ego."  
"You think that I'm her?" said Chibiusa in a very small voice. "The perfect lady that I always wanted to be?"  
For a moment the endless years fell away and she was a devastated little girl again. She was still too proud for the words "But I'm Usagi's" to cross her lips in a distressed wail, for all that the words wrote themselves across her face in a portrait of loss. Then she pulled herself together with a visible effort and said, "Serenity-mama told me that the Holy Grail contains its bearer, holding the Holy Grail, forever. Could she have meant?" Chibiusa swallowed.  
"The grail is a metaphor? For my own recursive birth?"  
"Rule. Raise yourself as well as you can. Crystal Tokyo will give rise to the Black Moon in the normal run of causality, and they will attack the past."  
"They'll have killed everyone in their inital attack and I'll be locked in crystal."  
"Something that looks like you will be locked in crystal. If Saturn will live but a thousand years outside the public eye I believe we will be able to make a surprise substitution that the Black Moon Clan will not detect."  
"Oh well, if its _only_ a thousend years," said Hotaru wryly, "Why, there's nothing I wouldn't do for these people I've never met."

"There's one other thing though," said Chibiusa, "I can't rebuild the world again. I just can't."  
"I don't think it will be exactly the same. The Crystal will listen to you now; the Empyrean Silver Crystal performs miracles, healing the world and bringing peace. It will recognise you as itself." said Pluto  
"Okay but you said we won't be able to con Death Phantom on Nemasis and that this Sephir person won't be fooled by Droids," said Hotaru.  
"We can nab the Sailors after I throw them in the obliette. Sephir will never see them again from that point," said Chibiusa. 

...

Chibiusa's conception was a miracle, small and unexplained. Around her eighth birth day she stops aging, and Serenity III and II experiences a complicated emotion. Her little girl is stuck, and she thinks herself an inadequate mother for it. But Usagi will be the one to help her grow past it, so Usagi is her mother, and that relation is precious to her.

...

In a dungon on Nemasis in the 30th millenium, three Senshi groaned their way back to conciousness.  
"Our transformations have worn off!"  
Then they realized with whom they were in the dungeon.  
"Wicked Lady!" said Rai, scrambling back.  
"Chibiusa-chan!" said Ami, hopefully.  
"Mysterious Sailors who I have never met before!" exclaimed Makoto.  
"Whom," corrected Ami.  
"Pluto." said Pluto.  
"Saturn." said Saturn.  
"Yes, I was those people, once, and they are part of me still. For now, We are Serenity III and II. Please, come with me if you wish to live." said Neo Queen Serenity the Third and Second.  
"Third and Second?"  
"There was an accident with an immaculate conception and a time machine."  
"We have limited time before the Wiseman notices that he can't perceive this dungeon and that that implies that there is a Silence Wall in place. Can we go before then?" asked Saturn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I'm concerned, Ami correcting Mako's who/whom usage counts as excessive PDA.  
> And I have no idea why my Sailor Moon Fic keeps breaking out in H2G2.


	9. Victory

"I know how to save That Other Stupid Usagi," Usagi told Hotaru, "You are not going to like it."  
She told her. She was right; she did not like it.  
"I don't like it either, of course. And it still doesn't get Papa out from me creeping on him."  
"Ugh," she added, "teenage feelings are the worst."  
"I'll miss you," said Hotaru, simply; she did not weep or rail against fate, "It will hurt."  
Hotaru does not remember any mother except Kaori, which is dreadful, and Ikuko, who is not technically Usagi's mum, and so is not legally her mother-in-law but took her into her home and her heart anyway and she adores completely. 

...

"I think that this is a weak point to your plan, Queen Serenity-sama," said Sailor Pluto, "Your sneak back onto Nemesis, into Demande's chambers, substitute yourself for Usagi; how much do you expect her to resist?"  
"She'll be slow on the uptake and need everything explaining like twice. Then she'll be all noble and refuse to leave me to her fate. Then we all get caught."  
"I know a sleeper hold," said Sailor Jupiter, at the same time that Sailor Mercury said, "I think I can find some anaesthesia options." They looked at each other and blushed.

...

Sailor Moon kicked and squirmed under Sailor Saturn's arm, but Saturn has her clamped firmly and manages to keep her fairly quiet and out of sight behind one of the Crystal monoliths. In front of the Crystal Palace, Wicked Lady was about to kill Neo-Queen Serenity.  
"Let me go! That's Chibiusa-chan! I have to go to her!"  
"No matter how much you love someone, you can't take their choices for them. Eventually, you have to let them go."  
Something dripped onto Usagi's cheek "Why am I wet?" She licked it "It's salty! You're crying!"  
"My wife is goading her younger self into killing her. Crying is perfectly reasonable," said Sailor Saturn, her voice steady but distant and strange.  
Sailor Moon went limp with shock. "They're both her? let me see!"  
She peered intently over a mound of rubble, trying to see the girl she knew in the elegant ladies facing off under the looming bulk of Nemesis.  
"She knows what she's doing," said Sailor Saturn, "please trust her."

...

With Serenity dead, Wiseman gathered the Black Moon clan, took a last sneering look at the ruins of Crystal Tokyo, and with a final outbreak of loud, mocking laughter, travelled to the past to conquer twentieth century Tokyo too. They took the largest of the Wicked Black Crystals with them but left Nemesis hanging in the sky. Nemesis would be there in the past, after all.  
"The Planet of Evil that we could never find ..." said Sailor Saturn, looking speculatively up with tear-filled eyes.  
Sailor Moon squirmed out from under her no-longer-resisting arm and ran to Neo-Queen Serenity's body.  
Sailor Saturn wanted to run with her, to kneel, to weep, to beg for a miracle but she half-expected one, because what else was Sailor Moon for? and that thought left her numb with hope and fear and unable to move. She had a duty as Saturn though, so she raised her glaive to the dark planet and leapt.  
Usagi knelt over Neo-Queen Serenity's body and wept, clutching her and the Empyrean Silver Crystal "I wanted to be there for you! To see you every step of the way. I wanted to see you learn and grow. I wanted you to tease me about oversleeping and know how very proud of you I am."  
Her friends were there; she could feel them, lending her strength and holding her up against grief, but that was impossible; they'd died on Nemesis and also it meant nothing because all the world was the unresponsive body in her arms. 

In the soft glow of the Silver Crystal's radiance Crystal Tokyo gradually emerged from its own rubble. Blackened, desiccated human figures plumped up and stumbled, blinking and confused but healthy to their feet and looked around in wonder as the sky cleared and birds started to sing.  
Then, for a few seconds, the glare of Ruin outshone the sun and the Silver Crystal both, etched shadows with harsh light and left spots that danced in front of everyone's eyes. Nemesis was no more. 

Saturn fell from the sky next to the Usagis and stuck the landing like a gymnast. She knelt to kiss Neo-Queen Serenity's brow and then said  
"She's sandbagging. If you stop crying for a moment you'll see that she's smirking."  
"Nooooooo, she's lying! Keep saying nice things about me."  
Usagi managed to hold Serenity crushingly tight, weep, kiss her cheek, strangle her, praise her and yell "Why, I oughta..." all at the same time.  
Chibiusa leaned into her mother and smiled like the sunrise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Saturn accidentally blinded everyone, I wanted to do something with Eclypse-viewing goggles as foreshadowing of the Dream arc but couldn't think of anything. Also, I don't think there will be a dream arc, but I thought this was complete at chapter 3, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Complete! (although I thought that after chapter 3, too).  
> Possibly nearly causally coherent!  
> Also there is now an out-of-order epilogue in chapter 7 
> 
> I've done a bit of an edit because I wasn't very good at coherent tenses, so maybe that's a bit better now?


End file.
